Asian Rap's Biggest Fan Is a White Guy from Staten Island

When
pressed to name just one Asian-American rapper, most people can't. I'm Asian myself, and
a year ago, I couldn't identify any besides Heems and Big Baby Gandhi.
Asian-American hip-hop is an oft-ignored demographic of hip-hop artists still
chugging on light milestones—the Far East Movement (tangentially hip-hop) became the first Asian-American group to have a
#1 hit in October, 2010 with "Like
a G6."

The
history of Asian-American rap goes back to the 80s, starting with Fresh Kid
Ice, one of the co-founders of Miami's legendary 2 Live Crew. In the 90s,
there were the Mountain Brothers, the first Asian-American rap group to sign to
a major label, who were beset with cultural ignorance—alternately being
asked to wear martial arts outfits on stage to being told that the label
"didn't know
how to market a 'white' group."

Being
an Asian rapper in America is complicated. On one hand, Asian rap actively fights
the "model minority" tag,
the passivity that Asians have been branded with in America. Yet the more
traditional Asian community often disapproves of rap music. To this day, an
Asian face in a sea of hip-hop often stands out as the odd fish, not quite
white and not quite black.

In the 2000s, emboldened by
their predecessors, a new generation of Asian-American rappers emerged, arguably
helmed by Chinese-American MC Jin and Korean-American Dumbfoundead. Jin's popularity peaked in the
mid-2000's,
becoming the first Asian-American to sign to a major label, but his lead single
"Learn
Chinese" never really took off. Dumbfoundead got his start as
an ingenious battle rapper in Los Angeles, but today his fans include top-tier artists like Drake, who
invited the artist to perform at the OVO-hosted King of the Dot's Blackout 5 battle rap event last year.

All this time, Asians on the
other side of the Pacific were growing their own popular strain of hip-hop.
K-pop, influenced by hip-hop, has become a global cultural monolith. But to
succeed as a rap artist in Asia is different because the majority of the fans are Asian and
the musicians aren't
competing within the over-saturated mainstream hip-hop scene that thrives in
the States. The Asia-based musicians can define it on their own terms (sometimes even
getting away with problematic
caricatures). There's no one to tell them it's "not black enough"or "not white enough."

In
America, in the mercurial lens of hip-hop, Asians have to wonder about where
they fit in. Asian-American hip-hop doesn't necessarily
sound any different from other types of
rap, but in an art form where personal history, identity, and
geography often provide the
backbone for the music, especially with regards to lyrics and narrative,
ethnicity can be a defining characteristic. Asian artists can either downplay
their race, as the Mountain Brothers did by not including their picture with
their demo, or embrace it, as Jin did with his song
"Learn Chinese."

In the last few years, a
variety of rappers of South Asian decent have become popular, too, including
Heems and Honey Cocaine, whose music
videos have racked up millions of views on YouTube. But many of these rappers grew
popular in the age of social media and the internet, and though it doesn't necessarily define their
music, it's tough
to consider their releases without the term "blog rap" floating around in the periphery. Regardless of
unique views, it seems there is still a bamboo
ceiling in hip-hop that Asians just can't
penetrate through. There have been players in the game, but there has never
been an Asian superstar in American rap history.

The
paucity of successful artists in the genre has translated into a scarcity of fans.
But to one man, a white dude from Staten Island, Asian-American rap is everything. His devotion is rare and real enough to make an impact on the artists
themselves.

Mark Seaquist's autograph-filled Daewoo car.

I've
written about
rappersmultipletimes for VICE, and during
my conversations with different generations of Asian-American rappers, the name "Mark Seaquist" kept
coming up. I first heard it from producer and DJ Mike Gao. "If you're interested in
Asian-American rap," Gao said, "You
have to
find this guy. He's a white guy from Staten Island, but he knows more about
Asian-American rap than anyone else." Other Asian rappers
I talked to confirmed Seaquist's commitment. It was clear: to understand the genre, I had to find its biggest fan. "Go soon," an older Asian
rapper urged me. "He has a pretty severe health issue right now. He might not
be around for much longer.

I
found Seaquist through a trail of YouTube comments and tweets. He goes by the
handle "daewooparts." He
is obscure—his profile
pictures are of Korean miscellany—but his tweets are rich in links and
artist handles of Asian-American hip-hop artists. According to some, he's
the biggest fan of Asian rappers, generally, though online it appeared as if he favorited Korean and Taiwanese artists. After
talking over the phone, Seaquist agreed for me to visit him on Staten Island.

A
week later, on a Friday afternoon, Seaquist picked me up from the Staten Island
ferry station. His car was Korean, of Daewoo make, evinced by the Korean Hangul
writing on the side mirrors. The car's roof was covered in more signatures
than a dive bar's bathroom wall. "That's the biggest
collection of Asian rap signatures in the world," he said. "That's everyone. That's over 150. I got
them all to sign it." It was like reading the all-star roster of Asian hip-hop:
The Mountain Brothers, Dumbfoundead, Awkwafina, Rekstizzy, Far East Movement,
Jin, Decipher, Timothy DeLaGhetto, Jay Park, Manifest, Lyricks. "And that's Keith Ape right
there!" he said giddily as we drove.

Seaquist
speaks with a slightest whine of a New York accent, as if a small balloon in his esophagus occasionally leaks air. He's an older guy,
born in 1968, but his passion for hip-hop culture is always evident.
When I first heard about Seaquist and his love of Asian-American rap, he sounded like an eccentric white guy with a cultural fetish. But when more and more artists vetted the claim that this guy was an important thread in a rather disparate music scene, I became curious.

Seaquist
drove me to his parent's house, where he lives, and brought me to his
sparse childhood room. He began bringing down boxes of his Asian-American rap
memorabilia. There were crates of albums, rolls of posters, and dozens of
shirts. Many had multiple signatures from multiple artists.

"This one, I drove
six hours down to Virginia for this show, back in November 2010," he
said, unfurling a poster. "Dumbfoundead and DJ Zo." Seaquist considers
Dumbfoundead, the popular Korean-American rapper, a good friend.

Seaquist
held up a Wu-Tang white shirt. "I'm never selling this, or giving this to anyone." He
showed me the back, which was was signed by the Asian-American rapper Lyricks. "That's one of my closest
friends," he
said. "He wrote this message to me personally."

I
read the message: "Mark, you are one of a kind...Ephesians 4:31. Read it, imma
test you! One love. Fuck haters, love em. They hate it, Lyricks!"

"There's
a dark side to some of this, which I might tell you about later," Seaquist
said as he folded up the shirt. "And Lyricks helped me out during that
time, so he was a true brother."

I wondered how did Seaquist get into Asian-American rap? The only reason I
learned about Asian-American rap is because I wanted to find where my ethnicity intersected within mass hip-hop culture. But
the white dude rattled off names, shows, and esoteric trivia like it was common
knowledge.

"Because I grew up
with it," he
answered. "Something real bad
happened to me as a kid... but my family
wasn't there for me." When pressed for more details, he wouldn't answer. However, he did explain, "The
people who kept me going were my good Korean friends. My friend's
dad was a Korean pastor, so I grew up listening to the music and culture and
started learning everything about Korea. I've gone to Korean churches since I was
little... I
still go to Korean Church now."

For
the rest of primary, junior, and high school, most of Seaquist's friends were
Korean, Taiwanese, or Vietnamese. "I saw the obstacles they faced. Some
of them tried to go into music in the 80s and they got mad hate," he
said. "Hip-hop, rock,
everything—no matter what they
tried, they just got shitted on. They got no love whatsoever."

"I had friends that
almost committed suicide because they got shitted on," he
said as he stared at his collection of memorabilia. "It was just so
unfair."

After
high school, Seaquist started to go back and forth to Korea, accompanied by his
friends from high school and college, the College of Staten Island. He then
started working in Korea, buying and selling car parts for Korean car
manufacturer Daewoo. "That's why they call me 'Daewooparts,'" referencing
his online usernames, "and that's why I have a Daewoo car." Seaquist speaks "broken Korean," as
he describes it, enough to shoot the shit, but not carry a full conversation.

While
in Korea, in the mid-90s, he was introduced to the budding hip-hop scene. "The first time I
listened," he
said, "I was like,
this
is good!
They sounded real, most of them rapped in Hangul, the Korean
language, but they were keeping the flow good." He began following
Korean and Taiwanese hip-hop, "before it became big," he said, referencing
the former's descendants,
which includes modern K-pop. "I don't really like when it becomes big like that," he
added.

Seaquist
wouldn't become obsessed
with Asian-
American rap until the early 2000s, when he was in his 30s.
As a friend to the underdog, and perhaps seeing himself as one, it was here he
would find his calling. At the time, Seaquist was regularly traveling to Korea,
New York City, and Los Angeles for work. A friend, knowing his penchant for Korean
rap, told him about the burgeoning American scene, where a kid named Dumbfoundead
was making a name for himself as a hilarious and witty battle rapper.

"My friend said, 'Yo check out this
underground scene, check out the Asian-American people coming up. Check this
cat out, Dumbfoundead; check out this other guy Sean Rhee. This was before they
were popular, but I liked what I was hearing," Seaquist told me.

"There was something
about it that was real," he continued. "The old hip-hop
scene in America was
true. They rapped about real stuff, real meaning,
they always had a story. It's not like the new shit today that's bling bling, and
drug drug, and molly molly, you know what I'm talking about? I'm not into the
fakeness."

Seaquist
listed some of his favorite old-school rappers as KRS-One, Rakim, Raekwon, and
Wu-Tang. He doesn't listen to many new rappers or "super-commercialized-stuff.
"In fact," he
said, "I've seen more of
that old-school spirit in some of the Asians than the new generation of
[mainstream] hip-hop artists."

A shortlist of his favorite Asian-American rappers includes Lyricks, Manifest, Decipher, Dumbfoundead, Souleaf, and WONHYO. Although he mostly follows East Asian artists, he's familiar with many from other areas—"I was at a Honey Cocaine show last Spring,"he said."I got it on Youtube. I know the Filipinos, the Cambodians, the Laotians, I know'em all."

By
the end of the decade, Seaquist had arguably become the American scene's biggest
supporter. He'd go to all the
shows (some of which are documented on his Youtube channel), buy all
the merch, and provide an endless supply of positive online comments. "I spent about
$20-$80 at each merch table plus tickets to the show," he
said. "Plus I'd buy friends' tickets
too if I had a few extra dollars."

A
week after my visit to Staten Island, Seaquist and I attended the first private
screening of
Bad Rap, an Asian-American rap documentary, in Manhattan.
The film follows four rappers—Dumbfoundead, Lyricks, Awkwafina, and Rekstizzy—as they face
cultural hurdles and pursue success as Asian-Americans in hip-hop.

Afterwards,
there was a Q&A featuring the director Salima Koroma, producer Jaeki Cho,
and rappers Lyricks and Decipher. Seaquist walked up to the microphone. "Brothers, I've been watching
you guys since the 80s," he started before abruptly tearing up.
"I just want to say,
you've come so far." The
balloon in his throat lodged there and he stopped. Applause erupted.

After
the screening, I talked to Lyricks, the Korean-American MC who had signed
Seaquist's Wu-Tang shirt. I
knew about Seaquist's relationship with the scene, but I
wanted to know about the scene's relationship with Seaquist. I asked Lyricks to clarify,
and he smiled as soon as I mentioned the superfan. "Mark's name [in the
scene] is almost as big as an artist's name," Lyricks said. "His
moniker is Mr. BTS, Mr. Behind-the-Scenes, cause
if you look at any footage of any show that we've done on the East Coast,
you're bound to see Mark in the front, with the camera, just capturing
everything."

His
support "goes beyond one or
two shows and just status updates," Lyricks said. "I could arrive in
New York at 5:30 AM he'd be in his Daewoo to pick me up and drive me wherever
I want to go." In
the last several years, Seaquist has become the New York City point-man for
many Asian rappers. He gives them rides to the airport, helps out at shows, and
acts as a one-man entourage.

Seaquist
has friends in radio that he sends Asian-American rap to, getting the artists
airplay and interviews. He also once facilitated a show in Korea for artists
Dumbfoundead and David Choi. "I do stuff for free that people would charge," Seaquist said. "Which is why I
think some people started talking shit... It might have been
a promoter who didn't get his cut."

Seaquist
was alluding to the blowback he received at one point early in his fandom. Before he became friends with Lyricks and others, a lot of Asian hip-hop artists viewed him with the skepticism given to many
white people who take a interest in the culture. "People [in the community] would see my comments on YouTube
or Facebook and say stuff like, 'Who's this white guy who's following
us?'" he
said. "They treated my
presence as if I was a stalker, and that's where I think the hate came from.
Even some artists dissed me and shit." But those negative impressions didn't last forever.

Mark Seaquist at a screening of 'Bad Rap'

In
the fall of 2013, Seaquist was hospitalized and diagnosed
with a brain tumor. He was reluctant to speak on the details, as if saying them
would add to their burden. The future of his health remains an uncertainty.

"I was so down
[because of the online hate], so depressed, I didn't have the support
of family, and then this shit [with the tumor] started happening," he explained. "It was like a dark
side of me. I almost committed suicide from all this shit. Then Rick came
forward."

Rick,
AKA Lyricks, reached out to Seaquist. "When I was in the hospital, you want
to know the few people I kept in contact with? Lyricks and CHOPS [another Asian
rapper and frontman of The Mountain Brothers]. They always kept in touch with
me. That's when I really
started to become friends with some of the rappers," Seaquist
said. Lyricks helped clear Seaquist's name among the artists and
introduced him to more.

"Mark is one of
those dudes whose passion [at one point] was unfortunately taken as fanaticism... He
had a negative connotation," Lyricks explained to me at the
screening. "His name was
synonymous with creepy. We'd have a show in Boston, we'd have another show the next
day in New York, and another show in Virginia the day after, and Mark would be
at all three."

"So it was kind of
at the point where we were like, 'Who is this guy? Why is he so interested
in Korean-American rappers? He looks like an undercover cop...'" Lyricks
laughed. "But when I met
Mark, he told me a story of how he got to know us and why he [supports] Asian
hip-hop and music, and he just became a brother to me. He went from fanatic, to
fan, to friend, and now brother."

Lyricks' words inversely
paralleled a previous conversation I had with Seaquist a week before, as he
drove me back to the Staten Island ferry. It was our final conversation of the
night, and the tone had been colored somber by discussion of his illness. At one
point, he stopped the car and pointed to the CD player, which was playing
Lyricks' music.

"To be
honest,"he said, "this is what
keeps me going—the
idea of these guys being successful. I feel like I have to live, to keep
supporting this new generation, my brothers and sisters."

Mark Seaquist doesn't have a job
right now, he doesn't have a permanent home, and his long-term health has been
compromised by his brain tumor, but he's someone who has—dollar-by-dollar,
ride-by-ride—helped nurture Asian rap in America. He's a white man who has
spent his life advancing an Asian cause, when it's usually the other way around. That may challenge cultural
expectations, but that's part of what rap is about anyway.

'Bad Rap,' the Asian-American
rap documentary, is beginning its film festival run this year. One can find
more information about it here.